RURAL ROADS

Rural roads are often where the most severe multi-casualty incidents (MCIs) happen, owing to the greater speeds at which vehicles can travel — and particularly those carrying lots of people. The pre-dominantly rural location of such MCIs creates multiple challenges for locating the victims and dispatching resources as quickly as possible. Fortunately, Beacon has been built for just these challenges, and can be used as a standalone dispatch system for rural communities through which major roads travel through, or in conjunction with centralized response services that are posted along inter-city transport corridors in order to dispatch local community responders while the formal vehicles are en route.

URBAN CENTERS

In urban areas where road traffic injuries are more common yet typically involve fewer victims, congested roads and communities with limited access make it difficult for ambulances to quickly respond where they’re needed. Beacon has been designed to address these issues, as well, allowing for a tiered response scheme that coordinates between formal vehicles and responders on motorcycles to get paramedics on-scene and determine the need for formal transport, thus reducing response times and also saving time and gas. In the same way, the Beacon platform also enables responders on foot to quickly locate patients in urban areas with no road access in order to determine the need for transport and, if so, to set up a rendezvous spot with the transport vehicles. Beacon’s built-in monitoring features also allow public safety and health agencies to identify “hot spots” where regular road traffic injuries are occurring, thus providing another level of real-time data available to both governments and local communities.

HOW IT WORKS

ROAD TRAFFIC INJURY

1. INJURY

A motor vehicle collision occurs and bystanders contact the local fire department or other public access number.

2. ALERT

The dispatcher sends out an alert to all nearby responders providing the incident location and requesting their assistance.

3. DISPATCH

As responders indicate their availability to assist, Beacon determines the nearest and most appropriate to dispatch, ensuring flexibility for high-volume catchment areas.

4. TRIAGE

On-scene, responders are able to request additional resources and coordinate among multiple agencies for mass-casualty incidents.

5. TRANSPORT

Patients can be transported to any number of receiving facilities, provide advanced notification en route and include rendezvous with other resources for long-distance referrals.

6. DELIVERY

The patient is transferred to an appropriate facility; transport status and other updates are sent to the receiving hospital pre-departure and while en route.

BEACON IN THE FIELD

“Bringing 911 Service to the Developing World With Smartphones and Motorcycles”

Photographer: Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for Bloomberg Businessweek

CAN BEACON HELP YOU?

Send us an email to let us know how Beacon could help your operations today.

Beacon Features:

Low-tech set-up — A single internet connected-device is required to launch

Universal accessibility — Can be used on any mobile phone, whether smartphone or feature phone, with or without internet connectivity

Easy-to-use interface — Text message interactions require minimal input, are easily followed, and are predictable; Admin and Dispatch interface is intuitive and accessible on any device

Automated control– After creating the initial alert, all resource coordination is automated, eliminating the need for dispatchers to micromanage individual resources

Low-maintenance operations — No need to download apps or worry about updates; just register the Responder’s mobile phone number and they’re ready to go

Modular architecture for easy customization — Beacon v2.0 has been re-built using a modular architecture to enable custom changes to message content and response sequence workflow

Remote access or local installation— The Beacon platform is open source and freely available. However, not everyone has software programmers on staff, so we can make Beacon available to you at a nominal cost via access to our remote servers. For installation on local servers, we’re also available to discuss more

Road Traffic Injury Features:

Tiered Dispatching— Allows different classes of vehicles and responders to be dispatched in staggered format to reduce the need for unnecessary travel by ambulances in areas of high traffic congestion and/or limited road access